i received Ielts provisional result today.
Such a relief! It was my first attempt and i hardly had any preparation. I work in a very hectic critical care schedule and i hardly managed to have any time to prepare for ielts. But trust me this is the most difficult step in the uk pathway.
what i did was- i took 4 days off , my exam was on 10th and 11th of october, got the Cambridge ielts book 14 and 15, 2 udemy courses for task 2 and speaking and conversed with my fiancé on a couple of common speaking topics. Period.
I was not able to utilize the udemy courses well but i would highly recommend them over any other courses available.
For me, listening segment was the one i felt the most lacking in when i was taking the exam, i would suggest everyone to practice listening very well. My 2nd passage was a flowchart, which i couldnt follow at all and got extremely puzzled. I think that event demoralized me so much it affected the reading and writing tasks negatively. Same goes for reading- the passages were much longer than what i had practiced in cambridge and i suggest everyone to take mock exams with back to back L-R-W. Maintaining concentration throughout is very important to get habituated to.
My speaking test was not upto my expectation. I was very panicked and uneasy, partly due to less than expected performance in LRW test and partly due to lack of preparation ,may be. Some of the topics caught me off guard and there were momentary hesitations.